Total War: Rome 2

- For ship boardings, it seems like even if you 'capture' the ship by killing everyone on board, you don't get to keep it (unlike STW2)? So might as well just ram and ignore boarding.

Another strange thing regarding ship battles is that it doesn't seem to matter if you lose an admiral's ship as long as at least one other ship survives, because it'll re-appear after the battle since you must have an admiral attached to each fleet. I chased an AI admiral around like that for three battles before I finally forced him into a fight that started with only his ship and he finally died.

Generals are sort of in the same situation. Even if they die the army needs another general so you'll get a new one immediately. They won't be as experienced, but it doesn't really seem to matter since the AI is helpless either way. Also, what's with generals getting a new retainer or two every turn? The pool of unattached retainers is ridiculously large.

I put a few more hours into the game, but I've stopped for now. I wonder if the patch will still arrive this Friday and what sort of issues it will resolve? It seems like they just skipped the QA process this time around or SEGA forced them to release regardless of known issues.

The thing with friendly fire in the back is that (at least in other TW games) arrows/spears in the back killed WAY more than say arrows into the armored/shielded front of the units. So if your troops were fighting an equally matched force so you had your archers "help out" by shooting into the fray from behind your guys - you'd do more harm than good. Your guys would get shot in the back and the enemy would deflect with their shields.

Oh I know. I used to have the same trouble as well - with the archers going completely silent once the battle lines engage. I'm just mentioning that it's not that huge of an issue in the current reiteration of the Total War series... which, to be honest, is not necessarily a good thing.

Generally when recruiting an army I will try to have equal parts ranged and melee units. Sometimes one extra melee unit to use as a flanker. I'll stretch the side units out a bit further, while keeping the center units a bit bulkier so they don't bend or break as easily. I'll keep the ranged unit's in front of the melee units.

In a normal battle, the AI will march some slingers or ranged units up to take pot shots. Usually one unit at a time. I select all my ranged units (velites right now) and murder that unit in one or two throws of spears. Then they'll march a unit or two of melee forward. Ranged attackers fall back behind the melee units. Then, the AI usually withdraws the unit, at which point rush your ranged units forward again and massacre them as they run with their armor facing the wrong way.

When the AI DOES commit to an engagement, march your melee forward to engage. Split your ranged units in half, and try and creep up around them to the back of their lines. Then unleash spears into the melees back. If you have cavalry or an extra melee unit - loop it around and start attacking from the rear.

Either way, you'll have one of the units on a flank break. Take the freed up unit & flanker (if available) and move the unit forward, then wheel to face the center. Attack the nearest unit in the back. Depending on how long the central line is, repeat until all their melee breaks. If you've got your ranged throwing spears, stop throwing at the end of the line that you are curling up. Use them to attack any misc ranged units in their back. At that point you just need to hunt down whatever is left of their ranged slingers and what not. Usually they see defeat spelled out and will rout anyway.

Note, you will need to improvise when the enemy is fielding cavalry, since they will be able to hunt down your ranged units. Try to use your flanking unit to engage the cavalry and hold them down until you can commit more men to attacking them. Sometimes the AI will just fling them into the battle, in which case you don't really have to worry about them.

In Medieval TW 2 I would try to place an extreme defensive unit with good morale at the front and form a triangle, with defensive units on the side. The AI would attack and their units would be allayed down the sides of triangle. Then I'd use melee units kept at the base of the triangle and attack the enemy from the rear, peeling upwards up the flank. Didn't work though if the enemy far outnumbered you (recipe for getting surrounded). Haven't tried this yet in RTW2.

I can steam roll with 4 ranged units, 4 calvary and a mix of spear and sword for the next 8-11 units (advance spear if facing enemy calvary otherwise sword leads). My 4 ranged units nuke the the first ranged unit and then I advance them and nuke the second and then pull em back send them flanking while my melee push. I can trim down the AI's rear (normally spear units) until I use my calv. The 4 calv units rush in from the side and rear and utterly destroy multiple decks if they aren't spear.

The problem is for any costal seige, I can normally push the cap before the reinforcements land. I faced a 2000 v 6000 battle and won 1850 to 3000. This may change as some cities are starting to get walls now but it really allows you to gain an early foot hold. I have the entire British isles conquered and I'm working on the two provinces in France (Normandy). I can leave 1 or 2 8unit armies on the isles for defense and count on my garrisons and walls to hold off until my army can reach it from London or Dublin. The rest of my upkeep is now going to building a naval fleet and starting on mainland Europe.

I decided to punish myself some more this evening, so I played another fifteen turns or so and saw some bizarre stuff.

First of all, AI admirals are even harder to kill than I first thought. Tonight I 'killed' one AI admiral two times before he finally died on the third attempt. All three times were battles involving just one AI ship. The first time I destroyed his ship via ramming only to watch him sail away on the campaign map. Then he attacked one of my towns all by himself and I played out the battle just for fun. He landed his ship and all 20 of his guys died on the beach to my garrison, yet I got to watch him sail away on the campaign map a second time after the battle. Finally I cornered him in another sea battle and auto-resolved so that he'd finally die.

Second, I went to war with Syracuse only to find that Libya had already put the town I wanted to take under blockade, which apparently blocks anyone else from putting town under siege. So I camped an army outside Syracuse's town figuring that if Libya took the town I'd just declare war on Libya and take the town myself. I had no treaties with Libya at all, but when Libya tried to assault the town I was included in the battle as reinforcements for Libya. It was really strange because I didn't even start on the map and marched in after the battle started. Is that supposed to happen if I'm not their ally? To make things sillier, Syracuse and Libya proceeded to have a 20 ship battle and Libya was defeated entirely before setting foot on land yet I still defeated Syracuse and took the town only to see it go to Libya since they were the original blockaders/besiegers.

I did get a good look at what the AI wants to do in a sea battle, though. Both AI sides basically rammed their assault ships head on, trying to pin each other in place with sheer numbers while their missile ships floated in the rear and pelted the pinned ships with arrows.

Finally, the last weird thing that happened was during another AI turn while I was besieging a different town. Since it was the last turn before they had to surrender the AI attacked me but when the battle map loaded up I was listed as the attacking side and I had to take the flag in the middle of the town, rather than the besieged trying to take my flag in some random field which has happened every other time the AI has attacked me when I'm besieging them.

The more I play the less I like Rome 2. Gave up last night till some fixes/mods arrive.

My biggest frustration so far has been the "magic transport ships" that troops turn into the second they walk into water.

If they were just magic ships that really sucked in combat, that would be fine. They do not suck. They are quite good. They have happily sunk dedicated naval units. Your expensive balista units and flame pot naval units are worthless against a transport full of dedicated melee troops - and less versatile. It's not that big of a deal early on - but it gets to be a really really annoying issue because...

...you cannot garrison a city without using one of your limited number of armies. The garrison troops that you get through buildings are inadequate. With the AI having magic ships, they can jump in and out anywhere and sail from coast to coast attacking/blockading one city after another and evading your army that is trying to catch them. I could deal with all these unpredictable city attacks...

...except they are buggy as hell when ships are involved. AI troops seem to often get stuck on the disembark stage - meaning 3-4 guys are stuck on the ship. Wouldn't be a big deal - except your units will NOT attack the enemy unit until it has fully disembarked. I lost two cities due to this because I had 3 stacks of ranged units against 1 stuck melee unit but my ranged guys wouldn't engage. I could force my ranged units into melee range and even then they wouldn't fight (the funky 1 on 1 combat animation would trigger every now and then but of course it was ranged vs melee so that didn't go well - every now and then the AI unit would stab one of my ranged guys in the gut then just ignore all the other ranged dudes) I quit the battle and of course it was a loss. If it happened once, I could deal with it, it happened again and after that I've just stuck to using Auto Resolve for any battles that involved naval units. Fine, no naval battles for me, I could deal with that...

...except land battles aren't as fun as they used to be. The frequency of "victory points" in open land combats is absurdly idiotic. It removes the ability to strategically position your troops as you are basically stuck guarding a set point. Those pretty hills, those ambush points - you can't use any of them - mosh pit at the capture point.

The campaign map aspect of the game has also really suffered. Cities used to show their status right next to their name, building stuff, making/losing money, happy unhappy - not anymore. Now you got to click on each province. With turns taking 1 year your generals seem to drop like flies. I am completely confused by the family/political aspect of the game - I've ignored it except for the events and so far I cannot see if it has had any impact at all.

Diplomacy is still pretty weak, the AI that you hardly ever interact with will keep asking you to pay them thousands of gold for a NAP - over and over. The quantity of gold they ask to secure a trade or NAP depends on your total treasury - which is meta as fuck. I had the AI ask me for 6k for a trade agreement right until I spent all my money - then they offered it for free.

The building system is horrid. There is no easy in game way to see what the building tree is. You have to dig through the wiki to see what building upgrade into what - it's not really intuitive. Worse yet it's really boring. In Rome, my cities were pretty much always building something. Here? Nope. Your cities will spend most of the time idling. The provinces sounded really exciting and at first I tried really hard to capture all the cities in a province, but in the end I have not found a pressing need to control the entire province - yeah you cannot issue an edict - but you will pretty much always have more provinces than edicts you can issue anyway. Also it doesn't appear possible to exempt or lower the taxes for a single city making it HARDER to capture a whole province as unhappiness is handled at province level and each unhappy city adds to it. It is in fact easier to capture a city in multiple provinces, wait for the discord to die down and then capture another etc. That seems to not be what the intended mechanic was - but that's how it works.

I'm giving up too and going back to Shogun 2. There are just so many backward steps compared to that game it'll probably take half a year's worth of patching to fix, if they are willing. Shogun 2 was a lot more playable than this when it first came out.

I was really hyped about this game, I really was. I have been a really big fan of TW series, I even liked Empire a bit (I forgave them that because it was a totally new system/engine than before so I expected some gaffs), and the absolute best TW game I have played was Rome. I figured, hell, the one game they need to remake is Rome. How could it be nothing but good? But in the last few days before it was released, I was getting an iffy feeling about it. Maybe it was some of the little walkthroughs I saw of the campaign GUI on youtube and the lack of any real characters, and probably the biggest thing was the lack of any pre-release reviews, especially by people who I respect, I am not talking about those "game" sites who are nothing but fucking shills.

I was THIS close to getting it, was about to buy it and forgot my niece had my debit card out buying groceries, so I figured what the hell, so I miss getting the Greek states DLC for free, I probably won't play as them anyways, and I will see the reviews the next day. So fucking glad that happened. After being anal fisted by the barbed wire dildo called SimCity, and the giant $300 mil monument to blandness called SWTOR, I am not really trusting anyone anymore on anything in games. At this rate if X Rebirth fucks up on a fundamental design path or any of the other games I was hoping would restore my faith in PC gaming for the future (not counting Star Citizen, that's too far off), I will just stick to playing oldie by goodies.

Maybe I will buy RTWII when it goes on sale on Steam for half off, or if the people I trust tell me it's actually good after numerous patches. But seriously, how could they screw something up that wasn't broke in the first place? They have consistently gotten better with every release after Empire, I thought it was going to be a shoe in for being a great game. What is it? Is it lazy devs who are taking for granted that old time players like me will buy their games no matter what? Do they have that much hubris? Or it some fucking CEO troglodyte who had "deadlines"?

I hate being proved right in my curmudgeon outlook on life, I really do

Rome 1 was one of my top games of the last decade so I was really looking forward to Rome 2. It has not been a pleasant reunion so far.

Most of what needs to be said has already been said in the last few posts - one additional thing I find kind of annoying is the near total detachment you have to your general. I've had several streaks where I had to replace the general of my army 4 years in a row because ....I have no idea where they went. I just kept getting the popup to choose new leadership for Legio I Italia.

I wasn't planning on getting this at all, but I needed a third pre-order when Future Shop had their $20/off three pre-ordered games deal back in June. In retrospect, I probably should have gotten Destiny or some PS4 launch title.

Having now finally played over 10 hours, I have to say I still enjoy the game, but it definitely feels like the formula is getting old.

I do like the provinces view which allows a more unified management of a region. It was a little confusing at first, but now I think I prefer it to the old ways. Load times are quite a bit better for me. Particularly a cold start into campaign. Squalor was notoriously bad in R:TW, and here it's still present but at least I've been able to manage it.

I don't think I've spent even one minute looking at the faction/family thing, and diplomacy seems to be either "we like you and we'll trade" or "we hate you forever die die stabbity die". But event that's not too far off the previous games. I'm playing Sparta and I'm presently at war with nearly a dozen different factions.

On the other hand, naval combat is seriously difficult--I just get slaughtered wholesale unless I use autocalc, which apparently just does a land battle-style calculation in that it doesn't simulate entire ships going down, just attrition to the crews.

Also, the bit where army units regenerate *at their rank* automatically, *and* you can have an army add-on that gives free experience every turn is just game-breaking. So far high-level heavy infantry + heavy cav destroys all. They just laugh at the seemingly worthless missile units.

After all, they can't come right out and say this themselves, but a post on the forums by an "anonymous" person can't be considered backstabbing or breaking an agreement you know what I mean? Either the devs are trying to lay the blame at the publishers feet (SEGA) or they just messed up and trying to make it look like it is the publishers. Considering that it's SEGA we are talking about here, I have no qualms whatsoever about throwing a heaping pile of shit towards SEGA's direction.

After all, they can't come right out and say this themselves, but a post on the forums by an "anonymous" person can't be considered backstabbing or breaking an agreement you know what I mean? Either the devs are trying to lay the blame at the publishers feet (SEGA) or they just messed up and trying to make it look like it is the publishers. Considering that it's SEGA we are talking about here, I have no qualms whatsoever about throwing a heaping pile of shit towards SEGA's direction.

Actually, all signs indicate that SEGA/CA can and will probably continue to get away with subpar releases, so I am disinclined to blame either of them especially when it appears that the market continues to reward them for this behavior.

Actually, all signs indicate that SEGA/CA can and will probably continue to get away with subpar releases, so I am disinclined to blame either of them especially when it appears that the market continues to reward them for this behavior.

What's surprising is that some of the omitted features (auto-fire, hold position, etc.) were staples of previous releases. The battle engine seems to be, at best, a marginal improvement over previous efforts (Shogun 2), so why would core features be non-functional/removed like that? I can understand new functionality being incomplete, like the family tree, but formations? guard mode? Did they start a new engine from scratch?

After all, they can't come right out and say this themselves, but a post on the forums by an "anonymous" person can't be considered backstabbing or breaking an agreement you know what I mean? Either the devs are trying to lay the blame at the publishers feet (SEGA) or they just messed up and trying to make it look like it is the publishers. Considering that it's SEGA we are talking about here, I have no qualms whatsoever about throwing a heaping pile of shit towards SEGA's direction.

I find the anonymous poster's assertion to be the most believable. Especially when you take the utter lack of performance optimizations and abundance of technical issues into account. I'd take it a step further and say that some of the design choices probably exacerbated the problem. It seems like the designers wanted to deliver something really big with lots of factions, units and additions to or complete overhauls of all the existing systems. Considering the time frame they had to do all of that it, their design probably wasn't realistic.

Over the weekend I played Shogun 2 Fall of Samurai and realized that I'd forgotten just how well-done and polished it was. It was also an iteration of an existing game that had been worked on for years at that point. It's too bad that Rome 2 couldn't have just been another iteration of that game engine, because it runs really smooth and the AI is surprisingly aggressive and effective compared to what we received in the latest game. Of course, it might actually be an iteration of the existing game engine but Rome 2 performs so poorly that I have a hard time believing it.

I actually spent some time yesterday playing on Legendary as Rome. I think I got around 25 turns in or so.

I've finally crushed Carthage (Carthago delenda est!), but due to the rapid conquests, My 3 combat legions are locked down dealing with rebellions and morale issues (2 are stuck in Africa holding the 2 Carthage settlements, while the 3rd is rotating around Syracuse), my 4th legion is a mere garrison legion for morale (around 18 of the basic levy javelineers - no real combat power except as naval transports).

That said, the fresh conquests will allow me to raise up a new legion in Rome, to start taking on the barbarian hordes in the north!

Some thoughts:- I like the Legendary Difficulty autosaving system. Enforces no save-scumming as you can't make any saves yourself. It just autosaves at the end of every turn, and after every battle.

- The AIs that I declare war on was surprisingly aggressive. However, they were often also quite retarded (e.g. blockading a city with 6 naval units... which then gets annihilated by the 10 or so transport ships).Perhaps playing 'total war' (declare war on everyone right away) would make it a really tough challenge

- Transport ships absolutely dominate Biremes and below. However, they're absolutely useless against military port siege ships. A single onager ship can destroy 3-4 transports before they even get close.So basically, ignore all ships until you get a military wharf. They really screwed up the early-game ships in terms of balance with transports.

- AI on legendary gets buffs for battles: troops get a nice morale buff (rout at around 30% units left, unless flanked from multiple directions). Their archer units seem to get huge boosts to damage (slingers and javelineers can actually work through my Hastari units now, and the javelin ships are a NIGHTMARE to fight in ship battles).Their melee units also got a buff (but not as high). Italian spearmen fight on roughly equal level to my Hastari (before the Hastari get massive amounts of XP of course).

- Battle realism is surprisingly playable (it is forced on legendary), and adds a nice element of strategy in fact.No minimap, so you need to scroll around to figure out where enemy units actually are (and gives the AI an actual chance of ambushing your forces in battle).Your visibility range seems to be unit, not general dependent.So using cavalry to scout, and the moving in your army behind that is how the battles play out.

- The new morale system is more manageable than I thought.No rebellions until -100 unhappiness, and the initial rebellion takes away 20 unhappiness for 4 units, and adds an additional 4 units every turn for 20 more unhappiness.The exception is slave rebellions, which creates an instant 20 stack for all 100 unhappiness.Buildings like temples (4-8 happiness @ level 2 - buildable in villages) and amphitheaters (6 happiness - only for capital) also help control it.Initial conquest gives -35 unhappiness, and an unrest value of -15 or so (so 15 turns for it to disappear).

So on a province where you control some cities already, you can build up the morale to +50-60, then conquer 1 province, and then let it slowly rebuild up to positive levels (and let the unrest value slowly settle) before conquering the last one.

Fresh territories, I tend to try to rapidly invade with multiple armies and conquer the whole thing in 1 go, then have these armies be garrisons to fight off the waves of rebellions all at once (as well as reduce unhappiness - a full 20 stack seems to be worth around 8-9 happiness, and the military crackdown seems to provide another 4-7).

Some Balance Issues:- the Veteran agents which can give 20/30/40 XP a turn to unit in an army are way too good. They let you turn any army with that veteran agent into a 3-golden-chevron army, and make Hastari into units better than Principles.

- Marius's military reforms for Legionnaires are actually cost-ineffective and not as good. Individually superior units, but the extra upkeep isn't particularly worth the loss of numbers.Plus, Principles = Legionnaires in all stats but morale, and Triarii provide you with a heavy spear unit from the basic barracks (without needing to build an Auxiliaries building in another province/city).

- Their 'strength calculations' are so off and favour the city defender so much in general. And unfortunately, the AI is quite stupid at offensive and defensive sieges in my experience (at this time - it's like the original release of RTW and MTW and such - stand there idiotically. don't cover capture points, etc.)

About RTW release (and vs STW2):It makes sense... essentially, they were given the same timeframe to work on RTW as STW2. Since STW2 was a much smaller game, they could completely everything for it and release it completely polished. Not so for empire total war, or rome 2, which involve all of the European continent and maybe parts of the new world and such.

Kalis, thanks for the summary mang. Gives me hope about the harder difficultly levels. Reminds me of the ppl that run Civ 5 at King or higher difficulty just to give the AI an advantage just to be challenging.

Kalis, thanks for the summary mang. Gives me hope about the harder difficultly levels. Reminds me of the ppl that run Civ 5 at King or higher difficulty just to give the AI an advantage just to be challenging.

No problem I will say, for the count, that legendary difficulty on STW2 was nearly impossible (especially once that damned Realm Divide - I have never managed to survive that once they send army after army from every faction, while I only have 2-3 of them - I'll beat 4-8 of them, and then my armies will be so low on numbers without any time to heal that I get crushed). Here, it is winnable, and arguably a bit too easy.

A few more interesting things.- The objectives are like a huge cash influx to keep the game moving at a good pace.As soon as you complete the main objective, you'll get the cash for all of them (so if you didn't do some of the bonus objectives yet, you won't get that cash).

- AI on legendary get a huge boost in income it seems. Syracuse, for example, was able to support a 20 stack and a 8 stack of ships on a single province.

So I'm curious: Anyone else play Total War games for the combat/battles and find the city construction/economic management aspects to be tedious or boring? I can't think of a Total War game I've played in the last few years where I didn't seek out a trainer to make the city construction less tedious in order to focus on the actual combat. It's not the campaign itself that's a problem. I enjoy conquering the map, moving forces around, and battling the various factions. It's just being burdened with all the economic and construction bits that feel like they get in the way of the fun, right up to and including Shogun 2, and I doubt Rome 2 would be any different.

So I'm curious: Anyone else play Total War games for the combat/battles and find the city construction/economic management aspects to be tedious or boring? I can't think of a Total War game I've played in the last few years where I didn't seek out a trainer to make the city construction less tedious in order to focus on the actual combat. It's not the campaign itself that's a problem. I enjoy conquering the map, moving forces around, and battling the various factions. It's just being burdened with all the economic and construction bits that feel like they get in the way of the fun, right up to and including Shogun 2, and I doubt Rome 2 would be any different.

I've always enjoyed both aspects of the game. Guess it's the SimCity/Civ player in me that likes to build up stuff. To each his own I guess.

So I'm curious: Anyone else play Total War games for the combat/battles and find the city construction/economic management aspects to be tedious or boring? I can't think of a Total War game I've played in the last few years where I didn't seek out a trainer to make the city construction less tedious in order to focus on the actual combat. It's not the campaign itself that's a problem. I enjoy conquering the map, moving forces around, and battling the various factions. It's just being burdened with all the economic and construction bits that feel like they get in the way of the fun, right up to and including Shogun 2, and I doubt Rome 2 would be any different.

I generally found it was more managing the happiness of provinces to ensure no revolts that got to me for previous iterations of the TW series.I enjoy the city building part because of how you need to balance your money spent on troops and buildings, and spending a bit too much on troops could leave you completely dead economically since you can't upgrade buildings anymore.

Well, in the end, I generally installed DarthMod for all the previous TWs to make the battles longer, improve the AI, and make things more epic/interesting in general Sad that he's stopped

So I'm curious: Anyone else play Total War games for the combat/battles and find the city construction/economic management aspects to be tedious or boring? I can't think of a Total War game I've played in the last few years where I didn't seek out a trainer to make the city construction less tedious in order to focus on the actual combat. It's not the campaign itself that's a problem. I enjoy conquering the map, moving forces around, and battling the various factions. It's just being burdened with all the economic and construction bits that feel like they get in the way of the fun, right up to and including Shogun 2, and I doubt Rome 2 would be any different.

I view the campaign as a way to get interesting battles--mostly of the "desperate defense" variety, but I had a silly encounter the yesterday when capturing Cypress (held by Seleucid). In the city garrison itself, there was one unit of slingers. But outside of the city (within reinforcement range) was three large armies (total: 8000 men). I had a good stack of Spartans (1750 men), but my cavalry was beat up after I foolishly threw them at some spear units in an earlier battle.

What did I do? Well, the large armies were technically "reinforcements", and the slingers were somehow considered to be a naval unit and started aboard a ship. So when the battle started, I simply ran my cavalry full speed towards the lone capture point, held it for a minute, and won the battle with zero casualties. Good thing too, because the AI was rolling up to me in a bloody hurry with about 1000 cavalry.

Now, because I "won" that battle, the other three armies were forced to retreat for a turn. I got a chance to regen my cavalry, and my "golden boys" (20-stack of rank-9 units) moved in to mop up the Seleucids.

Silly, but also fun.

(Hey, now that I think about it, I don't know where the regular city garrison went during that battle. Maybe it got merged with one of the larger stacks somehow.)

It seems like the AI is also braindead when it comes to squalor. Many times I've conquered a province only to find it's got a level-4 settlement and multiple level-3 buildings. The net negative effect on happiness from all the high-level buildings means they are constantly fighting rebellions/unhappiness. In fact, I think Carthage practically imploded with when half their provinces turned on them after they built too many big structures.

It doesn't really make a lot of sense that, after building a fancy town/fortification/fishing port/whatever, squalor should go up, and unrest start to develop. The original method in RTW where bigger cities had more squalor makes more sense, even if that was also broken. But I guess they need some method to prevent people from just building all the best facilities everywhere.

Is there still the squalor mechanic exploit of "move army out of, then trade high pop, high squalor, negative tax income city to enemy, then re-invade and choose 'KILL THEM ALL' to get low pop, low squalor, high income city" ?

Is there still the squalor mechanic exploit of "move army out of, then trade high pop, high squalor, negative tax income city to enemy, then re-invade and choose 'KILL THEM ALL' to get low pop, low squalor, high income city" ?

I haven't tried, but I don't think it works that way anymore. Squalor seems to be dependent on factors decoupled from overall population (which is just manifested as more building slots). I think the mechanic could use a lot of work; the original version made more conceptual sense.

I think killing the ungrateful scum will have the opposite effect to Rome 1.'Squalour' is just a 'public order' penalty from certain buildings (generally any mid-high tier building that doesn't generate public order).It's not really linked to population, except that if you leave empty building slots in a large city they get turned into slums, which I think have a sqaualour penalty (Basically, build a cheap building in all the slots to avoid slums, you can easily knock it down later if you want something different.)If you choose 'kill them all' it gives a massive one-shot public order penalty. It also damages all the buildings, and damaged buildings cause negative public order until they're repaired (which is expensive).In general, high populations are always good and have no real downside. It's high level buildings that you have to be careful about.

I played a little on someone else's computer. The annoying thing is the lack of explanation for so many features. What does authority do for a general? It doesn't seem to affect his public order bonus. I think it gives a boost to morale but who knows how much. Cunning supposedly gives a boost to defence, but is that just because the Strategist skill in the cunning line gives a +4% defence bonus or is there something inherent in the cunning stat. What the hell is gravitas?If my general's next level up gives him an option of "Small-town hero: Adds +1 to enbiggenment, +4% cromulence bonus in defence" then it wouldn't be out of place.

The enemy AI is very messed up. The capture the flag mechanics ruin everything, since the AI will often just charge the objective, even running through your lines to get to it.Naval battles are micromanagement hell. It's an RTS bumper-car simulator. Boarding actions can get a bit nasty, since the low level 'leve' javlins slaughter anyone trying to board, depending on the boarding angle.At campaign level, there are far too many pointless minor battles. I did a lot of autoresolving.

The romans seem a bit overpowered and the unit stats make no sense. Basically, the legions have awesome stats in everything except melee defence. You'd think that barbarian swordsmen would have similar attack, better damage but lower defence and armour.But no - the legions, with their huge shields, discplined formations and short stabby swords have worse melee defence but better melee attack than a group of big hairy barbarians. I haven't played as non-Romans, but I think it'll be very hard.Cavarly work well though, and fir their historical use. They are powerful shock troops that die very quickly without support and can't stand up to prolonged melee combat. They are great for killing missile troops or breaking an already-engaged enemy, but they'll get slaughtered in a head-on charge. I remember Rome 1 had ridiculously overpowered cavalry that hit like medieval knights.Oh, and Testudo is broken. It has no (noticable) effect on missile defence, so you just form a nice dense target and get slaughtered even quicker than in normal formation. Seriously - how did this get through playtesting? It's a feature they show off in the tutorial for fucks sake!

There are some very nice features, but I suspect we'll need to wait for an expansion pack to get the "true" version of the game.

Well, in the end, I generally installed DarthMod for all the previous TWs to make the battles longer, improve the AI, and make things more epic/interesting in general Sad that he's stopped

Radious already has a multi-faceted mod out changing many elements of the game. He's got it up on twcenter.net in the forums: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdis ... od-Threads. It's the Radious Total War Mod, which is his own compilation of the 4 sub-mods he's already produced. Radious is a less 'famous' mod maker for the series than Darth was, but I want to say I remember seeing his stuff since the original Rome or Medieval. It changes battle lengths by adhusting offense/defense stats, food production levels, squalor, and some small graphical changes like removing the FPS eating clouds from the campaign map, and stopping the sandstorms from kicking off every time a slinger or archer unit's ammunition hits the ground.

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What does authority do for a general? It doesn't seem to affect his public order bonus. I think it gives a boost to morale but who knows how much.

Damnit, I'd been treating 'Zeal' as the stat that gave a morale bonus, and Authority as leadership. Either way, it's a valid point.

To see the direct effect, select your general, and hover over those stats in the general icon on the bottom left. It'll tell you what combat skills are given and what effect it's having in-combat. Doesn't mention the success rate thing though.

SqualorSqualor is now building based, rather than population size based. It seems almost every tier 3 & 4 building will give squalor. I'm just sitting on tier 2 buildings at this time (admittedly, it's also early game and I don't have the income or most techs researched to even build level 3 buildings).

Also, don't ever leave an open slot without building something in it. Left for 1-2 turns, it turns into a slum or something similar which requires money to remove, and has an effect on squalor while it exists.

Silly game...On an amusing/sad/ridiculous note. All of my 'old guard' of original Roman leaders are mostly dead by turn 28 from natural causes.

So all the decently leveled leaders are gone, and replaced with new random young faces.They seem to be dying off in droves at the ages of 45-65 or so...

Getting a max level agent or general may be much harder than I expected, since they seem to die fairly young lol.

After playing for two days I decided to put this one away for a month or so. It's brought up that Total War itch, so I switched over to playing the Teutonic expansion from Medieval 2. The game just feels like 70% done. Huge gaps in functionality, performance isn't anything to go home about. One of their selling points is scalable performance?!

It just seems to me that they had a huge plan for stuff they wanted to do, but never got the time to actually you know, finish it. Sure they'll keep patching it, but I'm fairly certain most of this stuff won't actually be 'fixed' until the first expansion drops. Here's to hoping that they actually make enough sales that they can justify an expansion.

I will say it has improved the game a lot. The AI seems to have actual real units now. Fewer slinger swarms, more real troops, and just more troops in general.

Nerfed transport ships.Lowered squallor of high end building so AI doesn't build itself to death - and can hire way more armies/navies.

Still far from perfect, but certainly a better experience.

I really think that having all these unwalled cities was a HUGE mistake. It's way too easy to take them. Before with a wall there were at least choke points where defenders could really put up a serious fight. Now? It's not happening.

I will say it has improved the game a lot. The AI seems to have actual real units now. Fewer slinger swarms, more real troops, and just more troops in general.

Nerfed transport ships.Lowered squallor of high end building so AI doesn't build itself to death - and can hire way more armies/navies.

Still far from perfect, but certainly a better experience.

I really think that having all these unwalled cities was a HUGE mistake. It's way too easy to take them. Before with a wall there were at least choke points where defenders could really put up a serious fight. Now? It's not happening.

I don't like the unwalled cities with capture points. It's too easy just to bum rush the points without walls and when they have starting zones so close to the city.

Once an AI army passes a certain size (e.g. 8+ units) AI coding for city sieges is so bad it creates lag to the point that the game is unplayable, regardless of whether you're attacking or defending.

You have no choice but to autocalc most sieges as a result.Really, really disappointing.

On a side note, it was cool that I declared war on Macedon, and he drew Athens in (ally), and then Sparta declared war on me the following turn and started sending armies towards Italy (where I had no legions).

I installed the beta patch 2 over the weekend (I think it's live now). It helped tremendously on the turn times and the AI seems much sharper now - though it ain't saying much. Siege and naval AI is still badly broken.

On the plus side, standard battle AI and diplomatic AI seems better. Taking turns in the early game was much faster as well. I'm actually moderately enjoying this now

The buildings are seriously screwed up. Radious mods are good, but he needs to rebalance some of his buildings.

Basically, there is little point in going above level 2 or 3 on most buildings.Farms and temples in particular, end up in either a zero sum or often a negative sum of their improvements (i.e. the extra happiness and food from the tier 3 happiness temple and farm are lower than the penalties to happiness and food).

Now this might not be a huge problem, if you assumed that you are 'supposed' to keep most settlements small and efficient and just build a few Tier 4 monsters for high-level units or whatever. However, the AI loves his Tier 3 buildings so it ends up with constant rebellions due to all the squalour and no town growth.

I've only played it for a few hours at a friends' house. He used a mod to halve all squalour penalties, which really helps to get use out of the high level buildings and stop the AI killing itself.I might buy it if the beta patch is any good, but I think it'll take at least 2 or 3 major patches to fix everything.

Yeah, I'd hold off if you haven't gotten it yet. It's got 2 major patches already and I think it needs at least 3 more to work properly, let alone be able to compete with Rome 1. That last one is probably going to take an expansion/major DLC.

It's been too long since I played Rome 1 to be able to put a finger to why it was so great, and exactly what Rome 2 is lacking but one big thing is the lack of a feeling of continuity. I got generals dying left and right and I can barely be arsed to care which faction they are part of, my agents come and go, and the retainers are plentiful enough that I could crew a whole galley with them and it would be of better use as well.